Shameless Tease

Prepare to be disappointed. (Should be my catchphrase.)

I know I promised to talk about my past today, but something else is on my mind. (My imaginary, imaginary audience must be so disappointed.) A little bit of a cocktease, I know.

Not that it's anything new-BOOM! I sure got . . . me.

Anyway, the pressing thing that absolutely cannot wait another second is that I went out in public (wait for it) with someone not related to me.

My standards for excitement have fallen somewhat, I know.

The non-related-to-me person was Sam. I mentioned him before, I think. He was in group therapy with me. Straight, bleached looking, blondish hair. Thin little face. Eyes close together.

Sam dresses odd. Formal. Like pressed pants and polished shoes. Blazers sometimes. Lots of button down shirts. Always so clean. He always wears this silver ring on his thumb. Been meaning to ask him about it. Ex-girlfriend maybe? I know he fell for the last one.

Really the glasses are the only thing that don't fit. Big, honking hipstery frames. Who can say why.

He's got anxiety and social problems along with a pretty serious case of OCD. It's gotten better lately, though. Not-so-O-C-D. Less-C-D? No-C-D? Sorry, not funny yet again. Can't help it. I'd go forever if no one would stop me.

We hadn't talked in ages, but then he texted me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to go to the Cozy Cafe. It's downtown. Dingy little place. Crappy (cheap) food, good coffee, tiny tables. A.k.a. heaven in restaurant form. I said yes and we met up.

Sam and I must look so strange together in public. Him with his hand sanitizer and hypoallergenic, disinfecting wipes. Me ducking out of sight anytime someone with a business suit walks into the diner. (He used to wear black blazers until I told him they freaked me out. He doesn't wear them around me anymore.) We're the crazy twins. The jumpy, social anxious patrol. Dysfunctioning together, navigating social waters.

He had to ask the waitress bring him three different drinking glasses. Anyone else would get pee in their food for doing that, but Sam is polite. Always calling everyone "sir" or "ma'am." At the beginning of our meal he explained to the waitress that he had a condition and would therefore be asking for a number of water glasses. He apologized for it ahead of time and promised he would tip accordingly for the extra effort.

She liked him a lot, though. She actually gave us a free chocolate chip muffin on the house. Said she was mad at her boss anyway. I can relate. (Still not over the Jack-In-The-Box figurine, I'm afraid.) Anyway, it was so nice to be out of the house.

Didn't hang out long after that. Walked downtown. Talked about mostly books the whole time. He is the only man I've met who actually likes Jane Austen. Our big division is that I love Pride and Prejudice (Where's my Mr. Darcy?) while he prefers Sense and Sensibility. We're nerds. I know.

We got into a debate about Walk to Remember which was less jovial. I mean, I know that Nicholas Sparks isn't Shakespeare. But I can't help it, the movies are so sweet. When he walks Mandy Moore down the aisle it's such a beautiful moment. Sam says they're unrealistic models for love. I said he had a shriveled little heart that barely beat at all. The conversation turned out better than it sounds.

Zooey always makes fun of me whenever I talked about Sam. Says we're in love, secretly. Scandalous. It's not like that, though. I mean, he's nice and great, but we're just too neurotic for each other. If we dated we would never leave the house again, I swear.

Besides, I sort of had my Walk to Remember guy. Really fell for him. Online (don't judge, it was the early 2000's). Maybe that's why it was so perfect. Distilling the crazy probably helps.

Never a relationship-type-deal between me and the online guy, though. The only guy I ever had a real relationship with was kind of controlling and terrible. This online guy was different. A lot of winking and blushing smilings, but all just harmless flirting. Nice. Uncomplicated.

Even so, no one has really matched up since. And it was probably because I was young and we were separated by several states. But I still dream.

I'm sorry, this is not what I meant to talk about at all. Madison's love life is a depressing, depressing subject. And I don't need a beau right now. I need a friend.

And Sam is a great one.

Stats and Time

Checked the blog stats yesterday. Found out that no one is really reading. (xcept someone from Germany, maybe? Lol, hello to you single German viewer!) Decided it's time.

I think I'm ready to talk about it.

Really that's why I started this blog. I mean, I know I said this was for . . . what did I say it was for? Peace of mind. Pieces of my mind. Madison in pieces. My sanity. That is to say, the part of me that's still sane which is now a piece of a piece of a piece.

But all along I wanted to tell the story. To organize what happened. To say it out loud, finally, now that I know it's not real. The next time you read this blog it's going to be bad. It's going to be scary. About him. About it.

The man who is not a man. The creature with the long arms and no face. Capitol H.I.M. Like that Lady Gaga song, except the source of my insanity rather than a metaphor for god. (So maybe like Lady Gaga then, haha. Sorry, bad joke. I make them when I'm nervous. Not the time.)

He has a name that I refuse to use. People know it. They draw pictures. They circle him, single him out, in crowds of children. I can't say it and I won't. Last time I did, well, it wasn't good.

But I can tell you the story, back when Madison was whole. Back before everything started happening. Though you have to go pretty far back to tell you about that Madison, I can still find her. I have to.

No matter how hard he tried, he could never take that piece of me.

Zooey The Amazing

Sorry about that last post. It was pretty severely emo. Bad day. Bad thoughts. But I got through it. That's what the drugs do. They don't take the bad days away, they just make them easier to handle.

What helped even more is my sister's spider-sense for when I'm feeling down. I swear that girl is psychic. I left her a kind of ambiguous text message about feeling blue. Not more than an hour later, she showed up with ice cream (Neapolitan, duh), A Walk to Remember (which I've seen a hundred times), and Dear John, another N.S. movie (as we true fans like to call him, lol) which I've never seen).

Then she actually asked if I wanted to watch with her. Ha. It's like someone offering you gold and then asking if you want to take it.

We watched. We ate. We cried. Then we went down to the mall. Not to shop. No, no. I hate shopping. Clothes make me feel bad. They either make you look ugly and therefore make want to cry, or make you look great and therefore remind you that you have no money.

But being mutually broke since forever didn't stop us from having fun. We got a smoothie at Jamba Juice and people-watched in the food court. We wrote down the best.

1. A man with a mullet (Zooey has a thing for mullets, it's weird).
2. An elderly woman screaming at a security guard.
3. Two goth teenagers (both with more facial piercings than I could count on one hand) standing in the Disney store, contemplating Winnie the Pooh merchandise.
4. The most adorable baby in the universe. Big brown eyes. Looked half black, half something else. Wearing a panda bear hat on his head.
5. Two maintenance men chasing a squirrel that got in the mall somehow.

Zooey wrote it on a napkin she got from McDonalds. She's vegan, hates McDonalds, so she thought we should use their napkins.

What I love about my sister the most is that she knows how to be around me when I feel like my world is falling apart. She doesn't pry. She doesn't lecture. She just sits.

Sometimes when you feel down that's all you need. Someone to sit next to you and remind you that you're a perfectly serviceable human being.

And Dear John, by the way, made me cry at least three different times.

Facebook Statuses I Will Think But Never Post

Madison is feeling lonely. 

Madison hates her life.

Madison wonders if she will ever find love.

Madison is a failure at twenty-four.

Madison has trouble keeping out the darkness.

Madison wants to scream but can't.

Madison has to invent people that are interested in her.

Madison wishes it didn't hurt so much.

Madison is too toxic to ever be with other people.

Madison is a burden on her family.

Madison is Madison . . . and she wishes she wasn't.

It's days like this, the days where I feel so terrible I can hardly stand it, that make it hard to be. They make wish I was still at the institution. They make me wish I was still in high school.

Worst of all, they makes me miss him . . . and I never thought I would ever say that.

My Mother

So I bit the bullet and showed my therapist this blog. She said she really liked it. Yay! Started gushing about how nice it was to hear my voice since I'm so quiet in real life. Said I maybe even have a way with words.

How about that? Madison. Me. The girl who couldn't string two sentences together to cross a bridge. A way with words.

One thing my therapist did suggest, however, was to try talking about more people in my life. I guess she noticed that there weren't very many other people in my entries aside from Linda. (Poor Linda, she does keep me employed after all.)

I think it's time to talk about my mother.

Her name is Hazel and she is one of the beautiful women I have ever known. My hair is long, thin and dirty brown. Hers is thick and full and curly and chestnut. Even though she's older and put on weight, she has this take charge kind of beauty. Big brassy voice too. She sings in the church choir and plays a mean round of Euchre.

We did not always get along. Actually, I used to hate her.

Part of it was the adolescent, hormone driven anger that makes you want to attack anyone who shares the same genes as you. Reverse natural selection, maybe. Part of it was that she didn't believe me. And when your world is collapsing around you and your own mom doesn't believe you, it's hard to take.

It's not that she's mean. That's not it. Never been it. She's got these big dark eyes and severe eyebrows. Her face always makes her look more angry or disappointed than she actually is. It's always been hard to tell her disappointing things.

When I started telling her that I saw things she would say, "Don't be silly" or tell me that making up lies was unbecoming. But they weren't lies. It was so hard to convince of things she didn't all ready believe.

Mom world. Everything in it makes sense. Everything outside is dismissed.

It doesn't matter if it was my creature or bullies in the school yard or even my sister's bulimia at first. Did I mention I have a sister? Because I do. Poor Zooey. I think the stress of me and my mom fighting all the time didn't help.

I used to cry all the time over her. But those days are long over.

You see here's the other thing about my mom. When she realizes she's wrong, she admits it. She does a total 180 without even blinking.

And when she's on your side, there's no way you can lose.

We've been in family therapy a little. Mom, dad, Zooey, and I. (Haven't talked about dad yet, sorry dad!) And it's helped. Me and Zooey talk about how it was hard to come to her with problems. She apologized. She actually did. She uses words like "control issues" to describe herself now. She talks about her own mother. It's nice.

There have been a lot of important days for me, but the most important is the day my mother stopped being an arbiter. That day she became a person to me. Ever since that day, we've had very few fights. Even though my problems have contributed plenty of things to talk about.

And even though my life isn't going how it planned, I am thankful for this. I'm thankful that me and Zooey and mom can be in the same room and not fight. I'm thankful for her heavy touch and her uncompromising attitude when it has come to my road of recovery.

I know it took a while, but thanks for believing me mom. I don't think all mothers would still be by their daughters after all of this.

I love you mom, I really do.

Coming Clean

I've been feeling, well, guilty. Not lying exactly, just keeping out a part. One piece of me, like that song. "Pieces of Me!" Who's it by? It doesn't matter, anyway, but it's a big piece. A mountain range. A continent.

It's time to own up. Nut up, Madison. Confess. The meds and the work for Linda the Anal Retentive Goddess of Thrift Stores. (We call her that when we get mad at her. It's not a big thing.) There's a reason. There's one big reason and I've been trying to keep it out of the blog.

The creature.

I mentioned him, of course. How could I not, but I should explain, yes? It's time to. You deserve it.

It's like this. I saw things. No, that's wrong. Not just things. A lot of people see things that aren't there and it's bad, but it wasn't this. I saw one thing. A figure. An imaginary friend like a joke gone bad.

I don't want to tell you what he looks like. The last time I did that people listened. Then those people told other people who had been drawing pictures and putting them on the internet. When they saw my words and they looked at these pictures, they told me it was the same thing. The creature had a name there, but I don't use it.

My therapist tells me that calling him the other name overcontexualizes it. Start calling him that and you start believing he's real again.

And he felt so real.

For so long I felt haunted by this thing. This thing I cannot, will not, describe. Not now, not here. But I thought he followed me.

I saw him in mirrors. You know, the reflection on the medicine cabinet from every low-budget, crappy horror movie you've ever seen. Then outside of windows. Windows that weren't even at ground level.

He was behind my car, he was outside of my house, and he was even in my bedroom. He just wouldn't leave. And when I thought this things was following me, I started to do crazy things.

I hurt someone that I really cared about. I hurt them so bad that they may never recover. But, like the creature, I can't describe that now. It's too soon. It's too real.

So that's the depth of my crazy. That's the reason for everything else in my life now.

But I don't want to think about him now, because in spite of my loneliness I feel better. He has no hold on me.

Madison is not broken, that's what I tell myself. Madison is cracked and little by little I fill in the cracks with caulk and start to paint over the drywall.

One day I will be fixed. And when that day comes I will be the daughter, the sister, and the friend that I always wanted to be but couldn't.

Some day soon, I will be whole.